OpenStack to tackle open source integration

The OpenStack Foundation today announced its plan to overcome what it says is the hardest problem in open source today: integrating and operating open source technologies to solve real-world problems.

The OpenStack Foundation made its announcement, kicking off the OpenStack Summit currently running in Sydney at the Darling Harbour International Convention Centre.

OpenStack is an open source integration engine that provides APIs to orchestrate bare metal, virtual machine and container resources on a single network. It is the power behind a global network of public and private clouds, backed by the largest ecosystem of technology providers enabling cost savings, control and portability. OpenStack’s community of more than 82,000 individuals across 187 countries delivers two Apache 2-licensed software releases each year.

The OpenStack Foundation opened the OpenStack Summit asking, "Can open source software innovate?", with the answer being a resounding yes. Yet, says Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, users ultimately do not care about containers or virtualisation or software-defined network or all these good things. "They need services that move money, to help make phone calls, and prevent identity theft," he said.

"We’re trying to make better decisions to help businesses run better and that’s not about just technology, but putting technology into the real world to solve real problems," Bryce said.

To address this, Bryce delivered the OpenStack Foundation announcement that it was investing significant financial and technical resources to address the integration of OpenStack and other relevant open source technologies. It will achieve this in four stages:

Document cross-project use cases;

Collaborate across communities, including upstream contributions to other open source projects;

Fostering new projects at the OpenStack Foundation; and

Co-ordinating end-to-end testing across projects.

“As open source leaders, we’ll fail our user base if we deliver innovation without integration, meaning the operational tools and knowledge to put it all into production,” said Bryce. “By working together across projects, we can invest in closing this gap and ensuring that infrastructure is not only open but also consumable by anyone in the world.”

Key to the plan is the OpenStack Foundation’s close collaboration with other open source projects and foundations, through joint events, testing and upstream contributions. “Collaboration across foundations and communities is essential for open source to reach its full potential,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “We need to support each other and make sure open technologies work well together in order to build user and ecosystem value around these shared assets.”

The OpenStack Foundation also announced initiatives to support its integration strategy including OpenLab, the Public Cloud Passport Program and the Financial Services Team.

The Passport Program provides free trials from participating OpenStack-powered public clouds including Catalyst, City Network, Elastx, Home at Cloud, Memset, OVH, Scale Up Tech, Telefonica, UKCloud and Vexxhost.

The Financial Services Team is operated by China UnionPay to aid financial industries in migrating to its OpenStack-based cloud in compliance with stringent regulatory workloads. The China UnionPay cloud supports many UnionPay business services and applications, managing over 50 million transactions per day.

47 REASONS TO ATTEND YOW! 2018

With 4 keynotes + 33 talks + 10 in-depth workshops from world-class speakers, YOW! is your chance to learn more about the latest software trends, practices and technologies and interact with many of the people who created them.

LEARN HOW TO REDUCE YOUR RISK OF A CYBER ATTACK

As we automate, script and move to the cloud, more and more businesses are reliant on infrastructure that has the high potential to be exposed to risk.

It only takes one awry email to expose an accounts’ payable process, and for cyber attackers to cost a business thousands of dollars.

In the free white paper ‘6 Steps to Improve your Business Cyber Security’ you’ll learn some simple steps you should be taking to prevent devastating and malicious cyber attacks from destroying your business.

Cyber security can no longer be ignored, in this white paper you’ll learn:

· How does business security get breached?
· What can it cost to get it wrong?
· 6 actionable tips

David has been computing since 1984 where he instantly gravitated to the family Commodore 64. He completed a Bachelor of Computer Science degree from 1990 to 1992, commencing full-time employment as a systems analyst at the end of that year. David subsequently worked as a UNIX Systems Manager, Asia-Pacific technical specialist for an international software company, Business Analyst, IT Manager, and other roles. David has been the Chief Information Officer for national public companies since 2007, delivering IT knowledge and business acumen, seeking to transform the industries within which he works. David is also involved in the user group community, the Australian Computer Society technical advisory boards, and education.